Tiny Chester Theatre Company in the Berkshires is ready for bigger things

By Alexander Stevens, Daily News Correspondent

Sunday

Aug 5, 2018 at 8:52 AMAug 5, 2018 at 9:09 AM

CHESTER - Drive out to the middle of nowhere, take a right, drive 16.4 miles, turn left, and it’s on your right.

The Chester Theatre Company.

Sit on the porch of the theater’s office on the sleepy Main Street of this Berkshire border town. Tell producing artistic director Daniel Kramer that, although you’re quite familiar with the Berkshire arts scene, you only recently learned of the Chester Theatre.

“Yeah,” he says, “we get a lot of that.”

In his third season at the helm, following four years as associate artistic director, Kramer has had a front-row seat to the theater’s recent history. It’s a bit shocking that the little theater celebrates its 30th season next year. Its anonymity doesn’t match its accomplishments.

The theater deserves attention, consistently presenting interesting new work with a devotion to contemporary playwrights. The rest of this summer’s season includes “Mary’s Wedding” (through Aug. 5) and “The Aliens” (Aug. 9 to 19).

Many shows that were born in this little hamlet of Chester have made their way out into the world. In the past 15 seasons, 17 CTC productions have traveled to other venues, including Off Broadway.

People are starting to take notice. Kramer says the recent birth of the Berkshire Theatre Critics Association has helped; the Chester Theatre has landed both nominations and awards.

“The theater is well-positioned to take the next step in visibility,” he says.

Kramer, who lives in Northampton where he teaches theater at Smith College, knew the Chester Theatre was a good match with his own esthetic from the moment he took his first directing job here in 2010.

“I really believe in the theater’s focus,” says Kramer. “The theater believes, and so do I, that summer is a time when you can still do interesting, thoughtful work and contemporary plays. That’s appealing to me.”

It’s hard to imagine that anyone took a look around the area and thought, “You know what the Berkshires need? Another summer theater.”

CTC wasn’t born to fill a void, rather to fill a coffer. Chester (population 1,370) has no fancy restaurant and no gas station, but it does have a railroad museum. And 30 years ago, it needed help and a new location in town. A couple local guys staged a show as a fundraiser, and the Miniature Theatre of Chester was born.

As the theater built its reputation over the years, it was time for the humility to go.

“The idea of being ‘small’ comes with an inferiority complex, and I think we’re done with that,” says Kramer. “We realized that ‘Miniature’ had to be dropped from the name of the theater. We had to see ourselves as the real deal.”

With an annual operating budget that’s a little under $500,000, the theater still qualifies as “small.” But things are headed in the right direction. CTC recently received a $44,000 facilities grant from MassDevelopment.

Now the theater can handle the occasional (and inevitable) curveball.

“The air conditioning in the theater needs to be replaced,” says Kramer. “In the past, that would have been a big crisis. Now it’s just something we have to budget.”

And this is the first year that, when patrons purchase a ticket, they get a bona fide ticket – not the kind of paper cut-out ticket that you issued to that backyard production you staged when you were 12.

“On one level, who cares if the tickets are real?” says Kramer. “On another level, it makes a big difference.”

The theater will probably never get entirely away from “small,” and maybe that’s a good thing. Generally, audiences want and deserve intimacy in their theater experiences – intimacy is theater’s specialty.

Small also describes the size of the stage, the amount of room backstage, and the number of seats (130, packed).

“At first, you think we’re doing small-cast shows because of the budget and the size of the stage,” says Kramer. “Both of those things are true, but neither of them is as limiting as having to house the guest artists.”

Small also applies to the ticket price for Chester residents. In one of the coolest moves a theater company could make, the Chester Theatre charges just $10 to townies. That’s about a 75 percent discount.

The theater is just around the corner from the office (in Chester, everything is just around the corner). It’s housed in the Town Hall, and Kramer kind of likes it that way. For him, it’s a statement of the company’s connection with the community.

As he walks over to the theater, Kramer says the next show, “Mary’s Wedding,” is in technical rehearsal. They’re a little behind schedule. A storm blew through the previous night, and “a tree fell on a transformer and we lost power for six hours,” he says, with a smile. “It’s just part of life in a small town.”

Chester may be quaint, but open the door to the Town Hall, and the theater company’s ambitions are on full display. Nothing cheap or amateurish or small about the set, which looks ready for opening night. Cast in a magical blue light, it’s a World War I battlefield, 16.4 miles from the middle of nowhere.

“I feel like we’re part of the New England town-meeting tradition,” says Kramer, his voice hushed as the actors and designers do the tedious work of a tech rehearsal. “We all come together and listen to each other.”

For more information on the Chester Theatre Company, visit chestertheatre.org.